SIX

Opposition and Resolution in Sense and Sensibility

I want this film to break people’s hearts so badly they’ll still be recovering from it two months later.¹

THOUGH JANE AUSTEN’S Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, seems a work wholly restricted to the English countryside, the 1995 film rendition by Ang Lee illuminates the global and universal implications revealed by the dialectical struggle of this narrative. In addition to the titular dichotomy of “sense” and “sensibility,” an artistic divide in English literature was developing during the two most prolific decades of Austen’s writing career (1798–1818); the rationalism of the eighteenth century was gradually yielding to the nineteenth-century romantic emphasis on the psychology of the individual. In recent years, with the advancement of critical studies, Austen’s work has been held up to scrutiny for the way in which it responds to these two opposite sets of impulses. According to Meenakshi Mukherjee, “In terms of narrative mode and structure, her work takes elements of the conventional novel and quietly subverts them, without revealing any crack on the surface.”² The fundamental motifs of Austen’s novel also have resonance with the previous work of Ang Lee (in particular, Eat Drink Man Woman), whose films already proved a familiarity with the universal issues of family ritual and social duty. In addition, both the original Austen novel and Lee’s film of Sense and Sensibility point outward through references to the larger global community.

Historically, the work of Jane Austen has seemed to critics to be nonpolemical and nonchallenging to eighteenth-century orthodoxy (Duckworth 1971), and yet recent criticism, including feminist criticism (Monaghan 1980; Armstrong 1987; Clark 1994) and postcolonial criticism (Mukhergee 1991), brings to light original interpretations of the text which offer new possibilities and insights into its narrative meaning. These help the reader understand the economics, politics, geography, and social conventions of Austen’s world. The novels of Jane Austen, such as Pride and Prejudice (1813), Emma (1816), Persuasion (1818), and Sense and Sensibility, cannot be read as a microcosm of British society, a realistic and indisputable historical record—such a reading is unfair to Austen, whose work has a complexity and tension that will be elucidated by examining Sense and Sensibility in detail. Some of the dialectical aspects of Austen’s work include parody versus mimesis, private (emotion, personal feeling) versus public (propriety, duty), the individual’s need for self-actualization versus society’s dictate that one should conform to gender and occupational roles, space versus enclosure, movement versus stasis.

The Conceptualization of “Sense” and “Sensibility”

The themes of family ritual and social duty are the main cultural motifs of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. In this narrative, the British cultural emphasis on dignity and duty is in full display. Sense and Sensibility tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, who struggle to find suitable marriages to insure their social position after the death of their father leaves their financial prospects uncertain. Elinor forms an attachment with Edward Ferrars, the brother of her sister-in-law and heir to a large estate, while Marianne becomes infatuated with John Willoughby, the cousin of a neighbor. Both relationships encounter difficulties. It is revealed that Edward is previously engaged to Miss Lucy Steele, and he feels bound to honor that engagement. Meanwhile, Willoughby abruptly leaves Marianne and is later discovered to have married a wealthy heiress. Marianne becomes desperately ill over her failed love affair. However, things work out in the end with happy marriages for both Elinor (after Miss Steele breaks her engagement to Edward), and Marianne (who marries the doting, much older Colonel Brandon). Representing “sense” in the form of strict adherence to duty and social custom is Elinor, who is very proper and guarded in affairs of the heart, while Marianne’s romantic sensibility guides her heart and her impetuous actions through a painful process of self-discovery. By the end of the narrative, each sister finds a balance within herself—Elinor opens up and becomes vulnerable to her romantic sensibility, while Marianne gains a new guiding sense which grounds her without compromising her zeal to live life to the fullest.

Elinor and Marianne are introduced at the end of the first chapter. Elinor, at 19, is two years older than her sister, and considerably more mature. She is described in the first chapter as follows:

[Elinor] possessed a strength of understanding and coolness of judgement which qualified her … to be the counselor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract … that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Dashwood which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart; her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them. …3

Marianne is described in the first chapter after the description of Elinor. She is given abilities

… in many respects quite equal to Elinor’s. She was sensible and clever but eager in everything; her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent.⁴

The above description of the Dashwood sisters focuses on their “sense” and “sensibility”—key elements to the reader’s understanding of their characters. The Oxford English Dictionary demonstrates that the definitions of the words “sense,” “sensible,” and “sensibility” have shifted and changed between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries, but these key terms are delineated by the capacity for and control over feelings. Various key words applied to Elinor’s character include her understanding and judgement—“her feelings were strong, but she knew how to govern them.” In Marianne’s character, her feelings lack “moderation … she was everything but prudent” and “Elinor saw, with concern, the excess of her sister’s sensibility.”5 Although Austen goes to great lengths at the end of the first chapter to imply that the two major characters will represent the opposition suggested in the title Sense and Sensibility, the dichotomy is not nearly as clear-cut as the reader may expect. For example, Austen does not find disadvantage in sensibility itself, but in an “excess” of sensibility. Moreover, while Elinor is clearly assigned the role of the representative “sensible” one, Marianne too is described in the first chapter as “sensible and clever.” By the same token, Elinor is described as having “feelings” characterized as “strong.”

This attention to the terms “sense” and “sensibility” illuminates the quite complex way Austen employs these dichotomous notions in the novel’s plot and characters. This opposition is important to Austen’s work. As Edward Neill (1999) has stated:

Here the initial point seems to be that Elinor is Augustan humanism and Johnsonian control, Marianne incipient Romanticism and emotional open-ness, or display, Elinor “hide” Marianne “reveal”–and thus Elinor “right,” Marianne “wrong”. … Sense and Sensibility, then, is rather trickier than it looks. If it evokes, it also refuses the smartly diagrammatic oppositions it appears to ground itself on … both words are highly ambivalent, and not merely positive and negative vectors respectively.⁶

Another opposition implicitly stated by the novel is that between self-interest and social duty, or between the service of self and society. The narrator’s allegiance seems to lie with Elinor, who is lauded for her ability to subvert her own emotions in the interest of good manners. The character of Elinor demonstrates the narrator’s opinion that to behave in a socially acceptable and duty-bound manner is as important as being true to one’s own feelings. In the opposition between self and society, from a didactic point of view, Elinor is on the side of society. Thus, the novel also concerns itself with the demands of self and others.

The Global and the Local: The Universality of Cultural Influence

The struggle faced by the Dashwood sisters, while localized to a British setting, has universal implications. The rigorous moral, intellectual, and religious structures of nineteenth-century British society—family rituals, social customs, codes of decent behavior, adherence to duty—are the rich comic territory of Jane Austen’s Britain. These themes take on a universal significance in the hands of Ang Lee. Social duty, the chief cultural principle in evidence in this film, is central to Victorian England and to Lee’s previous works. Although the story is two hundred years old and from a remote setting and period, it has a timelessness and universality which Lee brings to the screen, proving the director an apt observer of global cultural codes of behavior. The central cultural principle of social duty also calls to mind Lee’s previous works, especially The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman. Even the title, Sense and Sensibility, reduces the plot to basic elements that express the essence of life itself—Sense and Sensibility is indeed stylistically similar to the condensed, summarizing effect of Lee’s own Eat Drink Man Woman title. The challenge of bringing the nineteenth-century pastoral world of Jane Austen to the screen would have proved daunting even to those well-versed in British tradition; however, beneath the unfamiliar customs (curtsying, social dancing) and costumes (topcoats, corsets, etc.), the fundamental motifs of the story—family ritual and social duty—were already familiar territory to Lee. The story has an enduring humanity and global appeal which Lee, although previously known as a maker of Chinese films only, was uniquely suited for. Furthermore, as mentioned in the introduction to this volume, the films have another striking similarity: the producer, Lindsay Doran, and screenwriter, Emma Thompson, became convinced Ang Lee was the best choice as a director after discovering the same line in both Eat Drink Man Woman and Sense and Sensibility, when one sister says to the other, “What do you know of my heart?”7

Nevertheless, it took a great leap of faith to put the classic British narrative of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility into the hand of a Taiwanese director whose previous work was in Chinese films exclusively. It was a synthesis of the producer’s and screenwriter’s growing appreciation of Lee’s The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman as films which combined both satirical and romantic elements. These opposites called to mind the suggestion of binary opposition in the title Eat Drink Man Woman, as well as the East/West dialectic of Ang Lee’s previous films. As in Eat Drink Man Woman, the title implies larger themes that the narrative of the movie will explore. The title Eat Drink Man Woman underscores the difference between male and female, yet it suggests an interdependence, such as that between eating and drinking. In the two pairs of the four-word idiom, “Eat drink man woman,” the larger motifs of food and sex, the fundamental components of all human life, are implied in the tidy shorthand of this Chinese proverb, and are universally recognized to be transcendent of any cultural boundary or border. Thus, the title of the film itself is a sign of the globalized, territorially nonspecific themes within. In an early meeting to discuss the making of Sense and Sensibility, Ang Lee noted the universality of Jane Austen’s narrative; “sense” and “sensibility” were “two elements that represent the core of life itself.”8

Ang Lee takes on British period drama in his first all-English film.

The conception of globalization is not only realized as the synthesis and transcendence of opposites but also as the representation of geographic localities and notions of territory—including nationalism, identity, narrative, and ethnicity. Ang Lee’s films complement the current focus on cultural identity and globalization in literary studies. The implications of globalization must be considered in light of the relationship between commodity and economic exchange and symbolic and cultural exchange—globalization studies are a continued rethinking of the relation among nations, economies, cultures, social practices, etc. Globalization theorists are divided on whether to view globalization historically or from a strictly postmodern perspective. Writers such as Roland Robertson (1992) and Edward Said (1994) argue that the globalization process has a long history and must be worked through key historical periods—beginning with the development of maps, maritime travel, and global exploration. This paradigm stands at odds with that of postmodern theorists Anthony Giddens (1990) and David Harvey (1990), who argue that globalization is linked much more directly to modernity and postmodernity. According to Giddens, the “‘lifting out’ of social relations from local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across time and space” is made possible by the cohesion and strength of twentieth-century nation-states.⁹ Meanwhile, Harvey takes his position on globalization from the point of view of recent developments in mechanization and technology—such as the internet—causing the shrinking and contracting of time and space worldwide; thus globalization is a thoroughly modern or even postmodern phenomenon.

Globalization—according to Giddens—leads to the “intensification of worldwide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa.”10 The implications of this theoretical paradigm are striking and provide fertile ground for comparative literary study, itself a field caught up with influences and relationships. Though scholars of globalization focus largely on the fundamental impetus of capitalism and the spread of economic and commodity exchange, Malcolm Waters does not agree that “the driving force for global integration is restless capitalist expansionism.”¹¹ Instead he feels that globalization has been fueled by symbolic exchanges, i.e., television, advertising, films, novels, music, fast food—cultural entities that are circulated and recycled simultaneously in many locations throughout the globe. This is based on the understanding that “symbols can be produced anywhere and at any time and there are relatively few resource constraints on their production and reproduction.”¹²

In keeping with this, Ang Lee’s portrayal of the world of Jane Austen in Sense and Sensibility hints at global and multicultural influences just beginning to be felt. Although the world of Jane Austen seems restricted to the territory of Britain, and particularly the English countryside—manor homes, cottages, and stables set among tidy green meadows—Meenakshi Mukherjee points out that: “It must be recognized that in the late eighteenth century, when Jane Austen was growing up, England’s economy was already inextricably tied up with territories overseas.”¹³ Mukherjee, whose own postcolonial, non-Western reading of Jane Austen is brought to bear on the social conventions of Austen’s world, highlights repeated examples in which the English colonies and the global world beyond England are discussed in Austen’s novels, and proves that Austen herself was informed of the importance of England’s colonies on a global scale.

In one scene from Sense and Sensibility, Mukherjee demonstrates that a broad knowledge of the world, including the colonies, is worthy of Elinor’s—and hence the author’s—esteem. Elinor, speaking of Colonel Brandon’s service in the East Indies, praises him, saying, “He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has read and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of giving me much information on various subjects.” Marianne, in her usual self-absorbed fashion, makes light of this, replying, “That is to say, he has told you that in the East Indies the climate is hot and the mosquitoes were troublesome.” Elinor counters, “He would have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such inquiries, but they happened to be points on which I had been previously informed.” To which Willoughby replies, “Perhaps … his observations may have extended to the existence of nabobs, gold mohurs and palanquins.”¹⁴ Mukherjee points out the following:

It is to be noted that Marianne and Willoughby, the two self-obsessed romantics, seize upon the twin clichés associated with the East—heat and discomfort on the one hand, pomp and splendor on the other—whereas Elinor … is genuinely curious about things outside her own experience and immediate concerns.”¹⁵

Clearly then, this scene demonstrates the limiting narrow-mindedness of the self-involved Marianne and Willoughby, who can only relate to the “other” through prejudice and cliché, while Elinor and Colonel Brandon are upheld for their multicultural understanding and broader perspective.

This is demonstrated even further by the filmic interpretation of Jane Austen, which elevates the character of the youngest sister, 11-year-old Margaret, to bring evidence of global influences to the foreground. In the film, Margaret’s (Emilie François) favorite possession is a world atlas, which she plays with day and night, often disappearing under tables and into her treehouse to pore over its pages. Presumably, Margaret has a deeper desire to know the globe beyond the barriers of her limited scope. The importance of Margaret’s atlas to her is underscored by a brief exchange as the Dashwoods prepare to move out of Norland, leaving behind the home’s furnishings (including Margaret’s atlas) to their brother, John (James Fleet), and his wife, Fanny (Harriet Walter):

Elinor:	If you come inside, we could play with your atlas.
Margaret:	It’s not my atlas any more. It’s their atlas.
(CLOSE on ELINOR as she ponders the truth of this statement.)16

In a later scene, the atlas is used by Edward (Hugh Grant) to draw out a hidden, unwilling Margaret. Elinor (Emma Thompson) and Edward joke in a deliberate way about world geography, which exasperates Margaret into emerging from her hiding place. The joking between Elinor and Edward as a semiotic discourse creates a sense of cultures and influences colliding and synthesizing, which demonstrate the true nature of globalization.

(INT. NORLAND PARK. LIBRARY. DAY. EDWARD walks in loudly.)
Edward:	Oh, Miss Dashwood! Excuse me I was wondering do you by any chance have such a thing as a reliable atlas?
Elinor:	I believe so.
Edward:	Excellent. I wish to check the position of the Nile.
	(EDWARD appears to be utterly sincere.)
Edward:	My sister says it is in South America.
	(From under the table we hear a snort. ELINOR looks at him in realization.)
Elinor:	Oh! No, no indeed. She is quite wrong. For I believe it is in—in Belgium.
Edward:	Belgium? Surely not. You must be thinking of the Volga.
Margaret:	(from under the table) The Volga?
Elinor:	Of course. The Volga, which, as you know, starts in …
Edward:	Vladivostok, and ends in …
Elinor:	St Albans.
Edward:	Indeed. Where the coffee beans come from.
	(They are having such a good time that it is rather a pity the game is stopped by the appearance from under the table of MARGARET who reveals herself to be a disheveled girl of eleven. She hauls the atlas up and plonks it in front of EDWARD.)
Margaret:	The source of the Nile is in Abyssinia.
Edward:	Is it? Good heavens. How do you do. Edward Ferrars.17

Another interesting feature to the character of Margaret in the film is that she plans, upon growing up, to become a pirate. Margaret’s “piracy” has interesting implications, both from a global and a feminist perspective. On the one hand, Margaret is studying the atlas so that she may travel the world as a pirate. Edward encourages Margaret in this fantasy by agreeing to go with her on a voyage to China.

Elinor:	Margaret has always wanted to travel.
Edward:	I know. She is heading an expedition to China shortly. I am to go as her servant but only on the understanding that I will be very badly treated.
Elinor:	What will your duties be?
Edward:	Sword-fighting, administering rum and swabbing.
Elinor:	Ah.18

This idea—the fantasy of piracy—is explored and elucidated in a further conversation between Edward and Elinor:

(EXT. FIELDS NEAR NORLAND. DAY. EDWARD and ELINOR are on horseback. The atmosphere is intimate, the quality of the conversation rooted now in their affections.)
Elinor:	You talk of feeling idle and useless—imagine how that is compounded when one has no choice and no hope whatsoever of any occupation.
	(EDWARD nods and smiles at the irony of it.)
Edward:	Our circumstances are therefore precisely the same.
Elinor:	Except that you will inherit your fortune.
	(He looks at her slightly shocked but enjoying her boldness.)
Elinor:	(cont.) We cannot even earn ours.
Edward:	Perhaps Margaret is right.
Elinor:	Right?
Edward:	Piracy is our only option.19

The idea of “piracy” is developed as a solution to the enduring trouble faced by eighteenth-century women who are allowed no employment and no means of self-support. Because eighteenth-century inheritance laws favored male heirs, females were left with no option but to seek social advancement through marriage. Although the idea of Margaret becoming a pirate is intended to be humorous, the plight of women in the eighteenth century is underscored nonetheless when Elinor points out to Edward that although he will one day inherit his family’s fortune, she, on the other hand, has no control over her financial destiny. Thus, as Edward points out significantly, “piracy” is the eighteenth-century woman’s only option for self-support.

By the middle of the narrative, Margaret, and Austen, have been allowed to make their point through this speech where Margaret has particular compliments for Mrs. Jennings (Elizabeth Spriggs) and Colonel Brandon (Alan Rickman):

Margaret:	I like her! She talks about things. We never talk about things.
Mrs Dashwood: Hush, please, now that is enough, Margaret. If you cannot think of anything appropriate to say, you will please restrict your remarks to the weather.
	(A heated pause.)
Margaret:	I like Colonel Brandon too. He’s been to places.20

“He’s been to places” is the key phrase here, indicating an appreciation for travel, an acceptance and admiration for things new and different. In considering the global perspective of Jane Austen and what Ang Lee brings to it, “He’s been to places,” seems an apt remark. Critics of Austen’s work agree that her genius was informed by an active and well-read intellect, which is revealed by the narrative complexity of her novels. Although Austen’s world often appears to have a remote, restricted, and static nature, there are hints in the book and film that the writer is looking outward to the world at large and absorbing what she sees.

There have been a number of excellent adaptations of Jane Austen’s work in recent years; Sense and Sensibility is one of at least seven film adaptations made of Austen’s novels in the 1990s. These films include Pride and Prejudice (1995), Persuasion (1995), Emma (made as Clueless in 1995, two versions in 1996), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and Mansfield Park (1999).21 (A new version of Pride and Prejudice was made in 2005.) The abundant variance among these adaptations demonstrates the extraordinary versatility of Austen’s work that came into play at the same time that Ang Lee was interpreting Austen’s world. Each of the film adaptations of Austen’s novels uses different combinations of elements (and excludes different elements) to bring the story to the screen, including variations in plot, characterization, setting, and acting style. For example, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless uses the cliques and peer rivalries in contemporary California high-school culture to provide a modern-day scenario in which the dynamics of Austen’s fiction become just as relevant as they were in Austen’s time, while Patricia Rozema’s Mansfield Park represents a more extreme departure from Austen’s worldview, adding a strident antislavery message, gratuitous nudity, and hints of lesbianism. On a lesser scale, Lee’s vision (with Thompson’s screenplay) for Sense and Sensibility also experiments with Austen’s work; in Austen’s novel, the male characters of Edward and Colonel Brandon are painted realistically without passion or attractiveness—Edward is unappealingly awkward and Colonel Brandon is lifelessly dull. Thompson’s screenplay adds scenes and dialogue to make these characters decidedly more attractive than they appeared in Austen’s original text. In addition, as M. Casey Diana points out in her 1998 study, the central characters of Elinor and Marianne Dashwood are fleshed out more fully by a viewing of the film. Finally, as discussed previously, the film provides a comment on the novel by evoking much more resonantly the character of young Margaret, emphasizing further a feminist dimension of Austen’s work.²² These changes provide a valuable perspective; all of these adaptations bring Austen’s works to life and read into her fiction in unexpected ways, enabling a deeper appreciation for Jane Austen’s timeless prose.

Cultural Collaboration/Cultural Clash

When executives at Mirage and Columbia began the search for a possible director for Emma Thompson’s adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, it was generally assumed the studio would limit their search to English directors, women directors, or English women directors. Thus, when Ang Lee first received the studio’s offer to direct, he was shocked when he saw Jane Austen’s name on the script; even Lee himself thought it was a risk to ask a Taiwanese director to do a British classic.23 His first-ever English-language film was also an iconic work in the English literary canon, his first period film, and his first time directing major stars. The many existing adaptations of Austen’s work had set an almost expected style and tone, and it seemed impossible to do anything new with the form; therefore, at the outset, the director faced enormous odds. Ang Lee, responding to a question about scouting locations and designing sets, props, and costumes for Sense and Sensibility, illustrates the enormity of the learning experience:

There was [a period of] about six months of research prior to shooting when I just learned whatever I could from literature, museums, visiting houses, landscape scouting, looking at costumes, checking the animals—the dogs and horses, pigs and sheep—everything. It was a long learning process. And I was also privileged to work with Emma Thompson, who was very helpful, as was the production designer. She was very generous about taking me to museums to go through paintings from that particular time so I could see the spirit of romanticism coming up, the rise of metropolitanism, and the industrial revolution. She introduced the whole deal to me: landscape design, drawing, painting. It took a long time.²⁴

Emma Thompson’s descriptions of working with Lee on this first foray into English filmmaking are recorded in a near-daily diary kept during the making of the film which represents possibly the most personal account and most detailed record of the experience of working with Ang Lee. The candid diary entries expertly portray various discomforts and misunderstandings brought on by culture shock. For example, a particularly trying moment happened just at the start of filming, when the actors (Thompson and Hugh Grant) made a good-natured suggestion to the director concerning a long shot. Ang Lee, unused to such a forthright relationship between actors and directors, clearly felt disrespected and threatened and had difficulty adjusting to the cultural experience of working within a British setting:

I’ve learned that Hugh and I caused Ang great suffering the other day. He has never had any actor question anything before. In Taiwan the director holds complete sway. He speaks and everyone obeys. Here, actors always ask questions and make suggestions. In this instance he’d designed a particular shot where Elinor and Edward walk through the gardens at Norland talking. Hugh and I were concerned about shooting (or “covering”) their expressions as there’s so little time in which to see these people fall in love and the shot seemed too far off to capture them. In the event his idea was much better than ours, but that we should have had an idea at all came as a genuine shock and he was deeply hurt and confused. Better today, after Lindsay and James explained that these were perfectly normal working methods. We talked and I think he feels easier. I feel terrible—as though I’ve ruined Ang’s first day by not being sensitive enough to his situation. It must have been terrifying—new actors, new crew, new country and then us sticking our oars in.²⁵

The culture shock experience was heightened because Lee had just been filming in Taiwan, where the director’s authority is unquestioned. Taiwanese casts and crew yield to the director in every decision and are not expected to have any creative input. The director in Taiwan is treated akin to an “emperor”—Lee’s own wording—and followed around with chairs, ashtrays, wet towels, and tea. Coming off of filming Eat Drink Man Woman in Taipei, Lee was still in that mindset when he arrived in England. Notoriously, he simply thought the crew was joking when they asked him repeatedly to extinguish his cigarette while filming a barn scene with horses—he was not familiar with the emphasis on animals’ rights over the director’s.26

The different expectations of directing style provided a slight feeling of culture shock for the British actors as well as the film’s director. As Thompson describes: “This culture shock thing works both ways, it seems.”²⁷ Thompson records Alan Rickman’s reaction:

Alan [is] in slight state of shock about working methods but I have assured him it works. We seem to feel our way into the shots. Ang’s style of leadership is somehow to draw us all to him silently and wait for things to happen. He has the shape of shots in his head always and will stand silent for minutes on end thinking through the flow of the scenes to see if what we’re doing will fit his vision. I find it very inspiring but it’s quite different from being told what to do. More collaborative. I think he’s enjoying our ideas more now he knows they don’t present a threat or a lack of respect.²⁸

The comments, or notes, given to the actors throughout production reveal the cultural divide in working methods. The actors were often hurt or distressed by the short “director’s notes” Lee provided them, the most blunt of which was to Emma Thompson: “Don’t look so old.” Lee famously required written homework from his actors; when Kate Winslet turned in a 20-page analysis of her character, Marianne Dashwood, he pronounced it “Wrong—all wrong.” Looking back, Emma Thompson found these notes humorous because of the misunderstandings brought on by cultural differences. A sampling of Ang Lee’s “director’s notes” to the cast include the following:

First note to Kate Winslet [Marianne]: “You’ll get better.”

To Emma Thompson [Elinor]: “Very dull.”

To Alan Rickman [Colonel Brandon]: “More subtle: do more.”

To Greg Wise [Willoughby]: “Great acting. I think.”²⁹

Thompson also records this conversation between Lee and Hugh Grant prior to shooting the film’s important love scene:

Ang to Hugh: “This is your big moment. I want to see your insides.”

Hugh: “Ah. Right-o. No pressure then.”³⁰

Thompson describes some of the high points of working with Lee as well:

Arrived for the opening “Big Luck” ceremony—a Buddhist ritual Ang observes at the beginning of every film. He had set up a trestle table with large bowls of rice, two gongs, incense sticks, oranges (for luck and happiness), apples (for safe, smooth shooting), a bouquet of large red-petalled flowers (for success), and an incongruous pineapple (for prosperity). Everyone lit a stick of incense, bowed in unison to the four corners of the compass and offered a prayer to the god of their choice. The camera was brought in … for a blessing, and a few feet of film were rolled. Ang struck the gongs; we all cheered and planted incense in the rice bowls. I cried. Al Watson, one of the electricians … passed Ang and said, “Is this going to happen every day, guv?”31

Thompson also details the dialectical elements of filmmaking with Ang Lee. She notes, for example, the behavioral contradictions that characterize him: he does tai chi but has poor posture with slumped shoulders; he is both spiritual (he meditates) and earthbound (he smokes); he is not overweight, but he eats enormous amounts. In addition, she observes the contradictions of Lee’s worldview—his sensibility is very unsentimental, like Jane Austen’s. For example, he cut a pair of swans out of a love scene, considering the presence of swans to be overkill. While filming the scene where the hero enters on a white horse—Willoughby riding to the rescue of the beleaguered Marianne—Lee pronounced the idea “ridiculous,” while the producer and Thompson insisted to him “It’s a girl thing.” Despite the complications of working with live animals, Lee requested sheep in every exterior shot and dogs in every interior shot. As the actors worked through their performances, a consistent suggestion from the director was for something subtler, with less emotion. He was particularly interested in the flow of energy in a film—its qi (breath, or spirit)—taking everything as a whole, in its widest possible context. In the scene where Willoughby first enters the women’s cottage, Lee reflected back on his experience of directing the scene: “Later, Ang said that he wanted the camera to watch the room, sense the change in it that a man, that sex, had brought. For Ang, the house is as important a character as the women.”³²

Thompson notes that Lee “loves the unspoken undercurrents everywhere.” He finds particular emotional nuance in the natural world, sometimes holding back a shot while waiting for the wind to blow, expressing that the look of the wind-blown clothing has “something nostalgic, lonely about it.”³³ She also notes Lee’s pleasure at filming scenes in which there is no dialogue at all: “Ang is in heaven. There is no dialogue. ‘This is pure cinema,’ he says, pleased.” She continues:

Ang is thrilled with all the topiary in the gardens. He had Marianne walking by this extraordinary wiggly hedge. Apparently it snowed one year and the snow froze the hedge. When the thaw came, they cut away the dead bits and continued to grow the hedge—in the shape of a wild snowdrift. It looks like a brain. “Sensibility,” said Ang, pointing to it triumphantly. “And sense,” he continued, pointing in the other direction towards a very neat line of carefully trimmed flowerpot-shaped bushes. The stone and lines of Montacute—grand, almost too grand though they are—give this part of the story a Gothic and mysterious flavor.³⁴

The tall, misshapen hedge provided the ideal backdrop for filming Marianne’s physical and emotional collapse. In the filming of the interior scene of the bedroom where Marianne is confined for her illness, there is a Chinese vase on the mantel above the fireplace. On this vase is the Chinese character “xi” in calligraphy; this detail was no doubt intentionally added by the director. The character “xi” (“happiness, great joy”) is associated with weddings and used to bless marriages, so it presents a sad irony in the dark room where Marianne, devastated by her failed dreams of a union with Willoughby, is wasting away. Yet another detail related to this scene is the exterior shot of Montecute House at dawn, where a shimmer of light appears on the horizon to herald the happy news that Marianne’s fever has broken. The criss-cross of the path in the yard suggests the empty cross of the Resurrection, just before Marianne awakens lucid from her life-threatening fever in a similar “rebirth.”

Ang Lee and Jane Austen: Dissecting Traditional/Global Family Identity

Ultimately, Jane Austen and Ang Lee are both consummate at painting family rituals and social customs. Underneath the strange, otherworldly costumes and strict eighteenth-century codes of behavior, the world of Jane Austen and the worldview of Ang Lee represented in his early trilogy films are closely connected by tradition—in both societies, there is a life-enhancing emphasis on harmony and on achieving a careful balance of opposites. The simplicity and grace of Jane Austen’s eighteenth-century world, the confidence in God and the monarchy, the determination to do one’s duty, and the lack of archness in human communication, are all similar in tone to the conservative and patriarchal traditional Chinese society Ang Lee had clearly portrayed in the “Father-Knows-Best” trilogy. Lee shares with Austen a keen sense of the tension between human behavior and the social restrictions and taboos that are meant to keep it in check. “Elinor’s sense of duty may prevent her from reaching emotional fulfillment, and Marianne’s romantic sensibility makes her very vulnerable to false promises. But you cannot really see them as black and white opposites. Each sister learns from the other by finding a quality that is already in herself—Elinor becomes brave enough to be seen as vulnerable and express her sensibility, while Marianne grows into sense without sacrificing her sensibility. Both find the proper balance within themselves.”35 This, too, reflects the nature of the sibling relationships in Eat Drink Man Woman. Lee notes: “Austen describes the sad feeling of growing up, and how we must go through so much hurt to learn about true love and integrity. This kind of struggle shapes all of our lives in one way or another—it’s universal.”³⁶ The exploration of common family relationships and the revelation of deep emotional ties are a unifying link between Austen’s world and Ang Lee’s work.